Competing Views

The provision for allowing local education agencies to use an assessment of a student's response to intervention (RTI) in lieu of a consideration of an ability— achievement discrepancy has been a controversial aspect of the 2004 Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act. To address issues that have arisen about RTI, a series of questions was posed to two authors who have written about the topic—one from an advocacy perspective and the other from a critical point of view. Their responses were arranged in a dialogue format so that these divergent views could be fully considered.